This new Albion recording reflects several years of collaboration between these two musicians, during which they became increasingly drawn to Vaughan Williams’s wider musical circle, particularly the women composers and poets who shaped his milieu. The album acknowledges RVW’s role as a mentor to Grace Williams and Elizabeth Maconchy, while also highlighting the poetry of his wife Ursula Vaughan Williams and relation Fredegond Shove, revealing a network of creative relationships that inform the programme and clearly engage the performers.
The recital opens with an “old favourite” – The Sky above the Roof. It was composed for Mabel Dearmer in 1908 and sets her translation of Verlaine’s Le ciel est pardessus le toit. RVW initially resisted the project but finally relented. The story goes that one day he went up to his study, saw the mess it was in, and wrote the song rather than tidy up. The poem contrasts a serene, sun‑drenched rooftop world with a quieter undercurrent of reflection and regret. Critics often note the technical refinement Vaughan Williams gained from his studies with Maurice Ravel in Paris: it is clearly reflected in this expressive setting.
Simon Heffer’s remark in his 2000 study of the composer describes “…Fredegond Shove, [as] a wholly un-exceptional poet…” This is a good example of how certain kinds of literary achievement have been undervalued. Her gifts are quiet, and that quietness has often been mistaken for shallowness. Her poems belong to a small, modest strand of early twentieth‑century English verse - spiritual, diffident in style, and limited in scope. It is a mix that seldom draws much notice.
Fredegond Maitland (later Shove) was the daughter of Adeline’s elder sister, Florence. She and her sister Ermengard served as bridesmaids at their aunt’s wedding to Vaughan Williams in 1897. In the years before the First World War, Fredegond spent periods living with Ralph and Adeline in London while studying at Newnham College, Cambridge, a proximity that informed her early intellectual and poetic development.
A.E.F Dickinson has noted that the Four Poems of Fredegond Shove (1925) brings together four settings of poems from her published collection Dreams and Journeys (1918). There is no attempt by RVW to create a song cycle.
Motion and Stillness is not as well-known as the last two songs in the group, but its intensity is unmistakable. It ponders the enduring land and sea set against vanishing clouds and ships - a world caught between calm stability and fading hope. It is a fine fusion of words and music.
Four Nights traces the
speaker’s thoughts across the four seasons, moving from spring’s heavenly
visions to summer’s unrest, autumn’s fierce turbulence, and finally winter’s
deep, angel‑guarded stillness where the soul lies in an enchanted quiet. RVW
uses a variety of modal scales and a complex accompaniment that never lacks
interest.
The most spartan of this group is
The New Ghost where the progress of the song “alternates between
recitative and chant espressif.” The mystical poem depicts a soul
leaving its body and meeting Christ in a bright, spring‑like vision; their
silent embrace marks the ghost’s peace as he follows the Lord into the heavenly
realm.
The Water Mill is the best
known of these four songs. Shove’s poem offers a kindly, detailed portrait of
an old mill and the family who run it, evoking the steady rhythms and quiet
human dramas of rural life where toil, nature, and domestic routine flow
together in a single unhurried day. Vaughan Williams has provided an
onomatopoeic, Schubertian vocal line and accompaniment echoing the mill lade. One
critic has suggested that "though only an English poet would so carefully
note that the Miller's tabby was 'as lean as a healthy cat can be.'"
Like many listeners of a certain age, I first encountered Elizabeth Maconchy’s music through her remarkable portrait of a river, the overture Proud Thames, issued on Lyrita Records (SRCS 57). Since then, a number of her compositions have been recorded, though much still awaits exploration by performers and record companies. Even so, the existing catalogue is substantial enough to allow an educated assessment of her achievement.
In recent years, two discs of
songs by Maconchy and her mentor and teacher RVW have appeared on Resonaus
Classics: reviewed here,
and here.
Inevitably, there is some overlap between the track listings compiled by James
Geer (tenor) and Ronald Woodley (piano) and the seven songs recorded on this
new album.
The first song is In a Fountain Court (1929) by the Symbolist poet Arthur Symons. This poem evokes a languid June afternoon where nature’s drowsy peace becomes a setting of expectancy, the speaker waiting for the beloved to arrive. Maconchy has not eschewed modal scales and harmonies in this gentle song.
Impetuous Heart, Be Still
(1924) is the earliest Maconchy piece on this disc. It sets a star‑lit yearning
verse by W.B. Yeats from his play The Countess Kathleen. An
impressively confident piece for a composer still in her teens.
The intensely beautiful The
Woodspurge was penned in 1930. The liner notes explain that it was
originally a piano solo, written the previous year. Rossetti’s poem captures a
moment of weariness in which grief reduces everything to one simple, almost
accidental observation: the woodspurge’s three‑cupped flower, the single fact
that remains when all else is drained away.
The Exequy (1956) sets a
handful of lines from Henry King’s long elegy Exequy on His Wife,
written as the Bishop of Chichester mourned his young spouse. It is not easy to
absorb: the musical realisation is often astringent, though at moments
unexpectedly exquisite. Its tolling accompaniment offers a discreet nod to
Ravel’s Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit.
Two songs follow, taken from Four Shakespeare Songs. Nos. 1, 2 and 4 date from 1965, while No. 3 was completed earlier, in 1956. The first, Come Away, Death (from Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 4), is intense and marked by rapid shifts of dynamic. The final song, King Stephen (from Othello, Act II, Scene 3) is a will‑o’-the‑wisp miniature, its toccata‑like accompaniment sharpening the Bard’s wry admonition against pride.
The last of Elizabeth Maconchy’s songs recorded here is Ophelia’s Song (from Hamlet Act IV Scene 5) (1926). This is a delicate lament in which a grief‑stricken young woman describes her true love’s death with childlike simplicity and haunting tenderness.
Grace Williams is one of the quadrumvirate of composers who dominated Welsh music in the twentieth century. The other three were Alun Hoddinott, William Mathias, and Daniel Jones. Williams was born in the coastal town of Barry in South Wales. She studied at the Royal College of Music under the auspices of ‘Uncle Ralph.’ Contemporaries included Imogen Holst and Elizabeth Maconchy.
The song cycle for contralto and
piano, Billows of the Sea, was commissioned by the Guild for Promotion
of Welsh Music for the 1969 Swansea Festival. The English texts chosen centred
around themes of the ocean, seafaring, and parting.
The booklet quotes Kenneth
Loveland, for The Times, who recalled that Grace Williams lived by the
sea and “that her sea on this occasion is a demanding and angry one, tearing
lovers apart…or claiming them as its prey…”
The opening song, to a text by
Walter Scott, recounts how the noble Rosabelle, ignoring ominous
warnings and portents, crosses the stormy Firth of Forth to visit her mother.
She perishes at sea as supernatural fires blaze over Roslin Chapel in a
prophetic tribute to her doomed lineage. It is a dramatic, non-strophic song
that is operatic in scope. Tennyson’s Sweet and Low was originally part
of Williams’s three Songs of Sleep, dating from 1959. It is an intense lullaby
where the poet is expressing a mother’s hope that the West Wind will bring the
child’s absent father safely home, as she lulls her baby to sleep. The
anonymous Galloway ballad The Lowlands of Holland nearest approaches
folk song, with a strophic form. Here, a young woman mourns the loss of her
drowned lover, refusing all comfort or future suitors. The music well reflects
the tragedy. Black-Eyed Susan is the most approachable stylistically,
yet there is suppressed tragedy throughout. In this “scena” a young woman finds
her sailor lover aboard the fleet, and the pair exchange vows of fidelity
before duty forces “Sweet William” to depart and Susan to watch his ship sail
away. Almost certainly they never saw each other again. A scene repeated so
often in history.
One other number by Grace Williams is included. The gloomy, but perfectly judged setting of the anonymous ballad collected by Walter Scott, The Lament of the Border Widow (1952). Here a woman laments the murder of her beloved knight, burying him with her own hands and vowing never to love again.
For me, the highlight on this disc is Kitty Whately’s response to RVW’s Four Last Songs (1954-58). According to Michael Kennedy's Catalogue of Works, this was not his last work. It seems that The First Nowell was to follow. To be sure these were devised over a four-year period, with the last being completed shortly before the composer’s death on 26 August 1958. They are all settings of poems by his wife Ursula. I think that the listener will be struck by the valedictory mood of these songs, as if both partners knew that time together was short and precious.
The first song shows Procris in her last moments after being struck by an arrow from her husband, Cephalus. Around her, spring is beginning to wake, and its gentle new life makes her fading hope and stillness feel even more tragic. The second, Tired, creates a quiet, tender closeness in which sleep becomes a refuge, its soft firelit imagery suggesting love expressed through stillness and memory rather than passion. Hands, Eyes and Hearts distils love into touch, vision, and inner stillness, each offering a wordless pledge. The final number requires the listener to recall that Menelaus, King of Sparta, had his wife Helen taken by Paris to his native Troy. It is all in the Iliad. This is the most dramatic song of the set. Menelaus comes home not to remembered earthly beauty but to a dwelling of timeless welcome, where wind, sea and lamplight settle into a quiet vision of rest and renewal.
I have mentioned the stunning performances at the beginning of this review. This is complemented with an excellent recording, most helpful programme notes and complete texts for all the songs. For details of Kitty Whately’s and William Vann’s resumes see their respective webpages.
In sum, this Albion release offers a vividly drawn portrait of Vaughan Williams’s creative circle, with the performers bringing great sensitivity to the songs of Grace Williams, Elizabeth Maconchy and RVW himself.
Track Listing:Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
The Sky Above the Roof (Mabel Dearmer) (1908)
Four poems by Fredegond Shove (1925): Motion and Stillness; Four Nights; The New Ghost; The Water Mill.
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994)
In Fountain Court (Arthur Symons) (1929); Impetuous Heart, Be Still (W.B. Yeats) (1924); The Woodspurge (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) (1930); The Exequy (Henry King) (1956); Come Away, Death (William Shakespeare) (1965); King Stephen (William Shakespeare) (1965); Ophelia’s Song (William Shakespeare) (1926)
Grace Williams (1906-1977)
Billows of the Sea (1969): Rosabelle (Walter Scott); Sweet and Low (Alfred, Lord Tennyson); The Lowlands of Holland (Trad.); Black-Eyed Susan (John Gay)
The Lament of the Border Widow (Anon. collected Walter Scott) (1952)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Four Last Songs (Ursula Vaughan Williams) (1954-58): Procris; Tired; Hands, Eyes and Hearts; Menelaus.
Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano); William Vann (piano)
rec. July and October 2025 St. George’s Headstone, London.
Albion Records ALBCD 069
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